OVUM/Breakthrough

I have cut and recombined 19th C. naturalist bookplate illustrations of bird eggs. Adding silk thread as a linear and textural element contributes to the resulting abstracted patterning, referencing not only quilt making but also needlework samplers. Eggs are a metaphor for gestation, abundance, promise, rebirth and hope as well as symbolic of vulnerability and perseverance.

“Anciently motherhood was represented by a sphere or circle. The circle, like the mundane egg, which is but an elongated circle, contains everything in itself and is the true microcosm. It is eternity, it is feminine, the creative force, representing spirit.”

-Matilda Joslyn Gage, Woman, Church and State, 1893

Interlude Series
an improvisational remix


Hand written music manuscripts from the Nineteenth Century - drawn with oak gall ink on paper - are cut, woven, layered and knotted/sewn. Responding to the existing marks and their graphic patterns, while intuitively recombining them, forms a new text.

The deliberate hand drawn notations and staves are divorced from their intended musical equivalent; and when re-assembled present a cacophony of lines, notes and marks. Sewn threads amplify the fragmented notations and lyrics, as a linear and graphic element.

I am utilizing both a reductive and additive process, which creates alternative rhythmic patterning and unique musical re-interpretations. Just as music is an experience monitored through time, the woven manuscripts are the result of metrical time, and ultimately a metaphor for both time and fruition.

The audio, visual and temporal merge in a hybrid form.